Alumni Spotlight

Kelly Pearce graduated with a bachelor of science in nursing from Deaconess College of Nursing in 2000. He has served as the vice president, operations at SSM St. Clare Health Center, in St. Louis, Missouri since 2012. Kelly’s journey to become a nurse began in January of 1993 when he was a freshman in high school making plans for a career in the U.S. Air Force.

News

Nurse practitioners ranked fourth and RNs sixth on U.S. News & World Report’s annual list of the best jobs. Employment opportunity, salary, work-life balance and job security were among the factors in the rankings. NPs and RNs were second and third, respectively, among healthcare jobs. Dentists were first, and were No. 3 overall behind software developers and computer systems analysts.

Video: Nurses Shatter the Stereotype

“Nurses Shatter the Stereotype,” a new video from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, spotlights the many roles that nurses can fill, and the many ways that they make a difference – from counseling domestic violence victims to serving in Congress. Watch the video.

Jacksonville Graduate Offers Tips for Male Nursing Students

In a new post on the Chamberlain blog, a recent graduate of the Jacksonville campus provides a list of nine things that every male nurse should know.

"You are studying to be a nurse, not a male nurse," writes Femi Borisade (left). "Your female classmates are not studying to be 'female nurses.' Just as female medical students break the gender barriers in medicine, we will continue to break the gender barriers in nursing." Read more.

When she was a child, Stacey Newby wanted to be a nurse. She ended up taking a different direction with her career, majoring in communications and working as a mortgage officer for nine years.

But something kept bringing her back to nursing, and in her mid-30s, Stacey enrolled in Chamberlain’s Atlanta campus. She is set to graduate this year with her BSN.

While some of her organizational and customer management skills have carried over, nursing is taking Newby to new depths of service. “I was in a public service profession, and I knew how to talk and relate to people, but nursing calls on your compassion at a much deeper level. It’s much more spiritual for me,” she said. Read the full story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Jennifer Krassinger, RN, a 2008 graduate of Chamberlain’s RN to BSN degree completion option, is the founder of Giving Is a Family Tradition (GiFT), a St. Louis-based 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to assisting families who are faced with the hospitalization of their newborn.

Among the latest recipients of aid from the organization: baby Lillian (pictured here), who was born four months premature and whose family recently lost everything in a house fire. GiFT is helping to collect items to help the family get resettled and eventually welcome their baby home. Learn more at givingisafamilytradition.org

As part of her MSN studies, she drafted a policy on brain injury that may be considered by state legislators later this year. What she gained from the experience also applies to her current position as director of a rehabilitation center in Des Moines, Iowa.

“Even on a nursing level, when you change policy, everybody has to be on the same page,” she said. “Now I’m able to speak to that and say, ‘This is how this change is going to benefit you.’”

She earned an associate degree in nursing and began working in acute rehab units. As her career progressed, her dedication to her specialty – and specifically to brain injury rehabilitation – grew.